


...pro patria flori.

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - World War I, Auror Sirius Black, F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Français | French, Gift Fic, God it gets so soft, Implied Sexual Content, Italiano | Italian, M/M, Muggle Lily, Muggle Soldier James, Muggle Soldier Remus, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Sirius is the only wizard among them, anti-war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Several weeks later, perhaps even a month or three or four, there sits a house in the quiet reaches of Switzerland that may or may not hold something peculiar and beautiful.[Unofficial/headcanon sequel to"Dulce et decorum"byshessocold]





	...pro patria flori.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shessocold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shessocold/gifts).



> I've been saying I wanted to put this piece together for a very long time, and then I wanted to do it in time for a birthday and then IRL reared up and prevented that so HERE WE ARE NOW _[very weak applause, perhaps the sound of one hand clapping]_.
> 
> Nothing special about this timing besides me wanting to crow the wonders of [shessocold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shessocold/profile), especially the fic that worked its way deeply into my heart, [_Dulce et decorum_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749369) _._
> 
> You're not contractually obligated to read it before you read this one but I **strongly suggest it** to the extent that I feel like you're really missing out on something special if you don't.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to [Amé](https://ame-reflets-dans-l-eau.tumblr.com/) for beta & French help, and [Arya](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis) for beta & Italian help. You two really made this story sing with all the beautiful little details that can come from the hearts of languages, and I'm so glad to have those in here <3
> 
> I know R & S are supposed to only have very rudimentary speech with one another in French, but [waves arms] suspend your disbelief, dear readers~~~~ I left some little stumbles/awkwardnesses in there, but largely their vocabularies are pretty robust. All for the easy of writing/reading and Very Soft Moments because can I ever resist those? NO.
> 
> Title is a play on words, hope it comes across clearly enough ;)

_ Je suis un sorcier.  _

_ I am a wizard.  _

And so, true to his identity, he magicked a house tucked into the foothills to fit as a cozy haven for two—sewed it thick with wards and all the unseen things that smell of metallic unreality and the flex of spacetime itself, all while the world saw fit to continue tearing at its own throat like some rabid creature clogged thick with vapored death.  _ Gas Mostarda,  _ Remus had called it one evening, staring deep into the fire with his hand tightening slightly around his tin cup;  _ Gaz moutarde, _ correcting himself haltingly when he seemed to remember the yawning gap of language between them in those earlier days, even though Sirius had known the meaning immediately for the hollow light that flickered behind Remus’ pupils. The very next morning before sunrise, Sirius had slipped silently out of the bed they’d begun sharing and woven an additional layer into the silent crackle of spells that defended them against things like weather and illness and the eyes of anyone looking for Sirius in the ragged-open veins of this bloody war. Then, he had made quick work of any small yellow flower springing up in the grasses alongside the house.

_ I will protect you here, _ Sirius had thought to himself then, thinks to himself now over another comfortably-quiet supper across from a crackling hearth while he watches Remus eat and bring ever more color back into those golden cheeks of his.  _ Elsewise, every inch of magic is useless. _

—

Sirius had made his decision to leave the comfort of relative safety back in the mountains in short little fits and starts. Once Remus was up and walking after several days, Sirius began feeling more and more guilty for taking up space in that little hut—not to mention the exhaustion of keeping up the glamour between all of them under the threatening weight of the old man’s rifle hanging over the fireplace. Watching Remus take short walks around the property sheared Sirius’ nerves every time as well, this fresh and sudden compulsion to keep him close and under watch now that he was pulled back from the brink of death beating absolutely feral rhythms behind Sirius’ breastbone, so it was only a matter of days before Sirius fashioned Remus a crutch out of useless firewood and a tap of his wand and they both bid farewell to the old couple who had unwittingly helped save both of them from callow death or uncertain madness.

As his own little parting gift, Sirius had charmed their eaves to never leak and their pipes to never freeze. It was the least he could do—after all, he promised the couple he would make it up to them. The door shut softly behind them and Sirius exhaled, long and low, to finally lift the spell on that house.

They had walked for a while through the crisp afternoon, the Swiss countryside as incongruently beautiful as ever while war continued raging unseen beyond the high rake of the mountains to the south. When Sirius’ legs began to ache and alerted him to the fact that Remus, limping along with impressive patience beside him, had probably been aching far worse for far longer, Sirius had coaxed Remus’ arm up over his shoulder and drawn his wand.

“Est-ce que tu vas me guérir, Jésus?” Remus said with a hint of teasing, his face very close to Sirius’. They hadn’t kissed yet, and Sirius had watched his lips for a moment too long as he rolled the words around in his head;  _ Are you going to heal me, Jesus? _ Remus had taken to calling him that whenever Sirius did any sort of magic.

“Seulement si vous demandez gentiment.”  _ Only if you ask nicely. _

And with a twist of his wrist and a rush of air, they were off.

It wasn’t the first nor anywhere close to the last time Remus had been staggered dumb by Sirius’ magic, but nonetheless, once they touched down a breathable distance away from the hut and the battlefield and the dregs of ice-cold memory, Remus had collected himself quickly and been delighted to see the cottage.

Sirius had used it occasionally through his journeys between all the nooks of Europe, keeping the house hidden to any besides him by way of artfully smearing its presence back into the hillock rising around it, fingers covering a shy smile. All its comfort and warmth remained sealed inside like an oak cask, fermenting and compounding in on itself, such that tears sprang up along the bottom ridge of Remus’ eyes when Sirius helped him over the threshold and into the tiny little sitting room. It was in that moment Sirius had the first thought to leave everything behind, shrug off his life of working for the next stuffed shirt in power, hide himself in this beautiful little hovel in the middle of no-man’s land and forget everything that isn’t this man come back from the dead to flood Sirius’ spirit with true meaning.

“Perfect,” Remus had whispered in English, angular and hoarse and he fought for composure, and with that Sirius had felt himself take the first step into the deep, screaming yawn of falling in love.

—

They kissed for the first time right there in the yard, witnessed by the yellow larch trees and the arcing cries of the jays wheeling through the sky.

“Les douceurs de ma patrie me manquent,” Remus had said, offhand, while he washed his breakfast plates in the kitchen that morning with slow ministrations, still feeling out the limits of his body through its own recovery;  _ I miss the sweets from back home. _

“Gâteaux?” Sirius asked from his seat at the table while he quietly charmed the dishes to do themselves instead, holding in a laugh at the way Remus’ eyes went wide as the saucer that floated its way out of his hands.  _ What, cakes? _

“Bicerin.” Remus resumed his train of thought after shaking his head briefly, a few of his curls bouncing with the movement. He had looked then straight at Sirius, almost challenging him, and leaned against the counter while he crossed his arms carefully across his chest. “Une de mes préférées, une boisson à base d'espresso, de chocolat et de lait.”  _ An old favorite of mine, a drink of espresso, chocolate, and milk. _

Sirius had felt the dare crackle in the air between them before shrugging his shoulders. “Intéressant,” he said airily, turning back to the well-weathered book taken from the brimming shelves in the sitting room that tended to restock themselves with books Sirius could never remember putting there himself.  _ Interesting. _

If Remus had caught the way Sirius’ fingers began drumming against the spine of the book with eager inspiration, he didn’t let on.

Knowing how much Remus loved to sit outside, especially here where the air was purer than snow—but perish the thought of snow itself, that cold tomb that almost stole Remus’ heartbeat with its icy claws—Sirius had kept the boundaries of his protective magic wide, into the edge of the forest that tended to get beautiful doses of sunshine just past lunchtime. Sirius had waited until Remus took his daily walk out to that limit, his favorite grove, before setting to the kitchen ingredients like a madman. There, chocolate; here, the milk; there, the coffee grounds, but no espresso, could plain coffee still work? The minor mess that spelled itself across the counter as Sirius slurried them together as best he could from his own imagination was nothing compared to the small riot in his heart, so excited to be thinking of something that wasn’t war or blood or bone. Yes, it was healing, but the  _ right _ kind of healing, a healing of the heart. 

Sirius was surprised he didn’t trip over his own two feet as he tromped out over the thinly-trod path to where he knew Remus had wandered, and he raised one hand in greeting while balancing the teacup in his other hand to bring Remus up and walking to meet him in the middle of the path—his gait was getting smoother, stronger, surer, Sirius noticed as Remus came to a stop before him with a pleased little smile.

“Thé?” He had asked,  _ Tea? _ , nodding at the drink.

“Bicerin,” Sirius murmured, slightly manic, feeling the heat of the sun on his neck like intense expectation. Remus had furrowed his eyebrows but taken the cup nonetheless, sipped once from it, and nearly dropped it. Sirius’ back teeth sang with resistance as he attempted at evenness; “Ah, c'est faux?”  _ Did I make it wrong? _

“Non,” Remus’ immediate response scraping out before he took another deep gulp of it and shut his eyes, swallowing around it with the long column of his throat as though wishing to dismantle the taste and hold it close. “Non, tu es exactement ce dont j'ai besoin.”  _ No, you’re exactly what I need. _

Sirius was about to ask Remus didn’t he mean  _ c’est exactement  _ as in _ It’s exactly what I need  _ rather than  _ you’re; _ understandable, really as grammar tends to escape Sirius as well most days—but before he could pull up any words, Remus was placing the cup and saucer carefully in the grass and, to Sirius’ combined shock and delight and everything he could have ever imagined feeling in a moment of condensed peace, taking Sirius by the shoulders to pull him close and kiss him soundly on the mouth.

It was the first of many kisses to bloom between them. It tasted to Sirius of coffee, chocolate, milk, and the unexpected shape of home.

—

The morning the other Italian soldier shows up, it’s been several weeks in the cottage and early summer bleeds hot and languid against the windowpane.

Sirius has only just fastened his trousers after taking a slow and exploratory morning tracing the mauve-red scars across Remus’ chest, guiding them both through rubied avenues of pleasure that make Sirius ache to watch Remus toss deliciously amid the sheets as he encourages Sirius in scraps of each of his languages at once— _ Sì, Oui, Yes, oh ti prego _ —when the front door raps so tentatively Sirius thinks he almost doesn’t hear it.

“La porte?” Sirius murmurs,  _ The door? _ , his eyes finding Remus’ immediately. Remus is staring down the open bedroom door, down the short hallway that bends in an L-shape to lead to the front of the cottage. He nods.

“Oui. Je vais ouvrir?”  _ Yes. Should I answer it? _

Sirius swallows a bawdy chuckle, taking in Remus’ blatant nakedness in flaxen relief against the bedclothes. He throws on a shirt before taking up his wand from the bedside table, ever his knife in the dark, and gestures purposefully with it. “J'y vais.”  _ I’ll go. _

Prepared for all manner of discovery, Sirius’ expression hardens as his body tenses, moving slow and quiet toward the entryway as the visitor raps again on the door. Ally? Axis? Defector? Local? He stills his hand on the doorknob, readies a stupefying spell in the back of his mind with his wand up his sleeve, and swings open the door.

“No shoot please, I am without weapons!”

Sirius blinks in the buttery morning light beating down to behold the sweating soldier on the doorstep. His coal-black hair is wild without a hat either willingly discarded or lost, his uniform filthy and rimed with dampness around his collar and—

“Italian?” Sirius says aloud, cataloguing the military detailing that he remembers, with a tight lurching in his stomach, from the battlefield on which he found Remus. The soldier lights up, nodding quickly, and leaps into his mother tongue.

“Sì! Sono italiano, ah, grazie a Dio! Cammino da giorni e speravo—”

“Oh, I— _ Mi scusi, _ I am English,” Sirius interrupts him, more than a little sheepish, gesturing to himself with the hand not busied around his wand. “Do you speak?”

The soldier seems to sag a little, whether from exhaustion or disappointment it’s hard to tell. “Eh, un—a little, no much.” He makes a pinching shape with calloused, pale fingers just as Sirius hears running footsteps quick on the floorboards behind him.

“Italiano?” Remus says, more than slightly breathless as he crowds the doorstep beside Sirius, distractedly buttoning up his shirt. The soldier’s eyes widen again, as though Remus has just told him the war is over.

“English?” The soldier points at Remus and Remus shakes his head, putting a hand over his heart.

“Sono torinese,” Remus says with a smile that makes Sirius’ heart flex sweetly; Turin, the homeland Remus has only mentioned a few times in wistful passing when he’s been moved to tell Sirius about his life before the war.

The soldier on the doorstep lets fly a laugh that seems to carry all the aches of combat, fling them into the sky never to be held again, and puts his palm to his forehead in disbelief. “Piemontese!” He cries, “Nato ad Alba!”

In a flash, Sirius finds himself stumbling aside as the soldier leaps forward, and he almost draws his wand in whip-quick instinct before he realizes the soldier means no harm and has only thrown his arms around Remus in a desperate, fraternal embrace. Remus looks shocked, wincing, but holds his ground as he takes a moment to process the situation before carefully returning the hold.

After several still moments, the soldier begins to weep against Remus’ shoulder. “Sono nato ad Alba,” he repeats, thick through tears with the sort of exhausted emotion that makes Sirius’ sympathy quiver madly behind his heart without needing to understand what he’s saying; “Sono nato nella bellissima Alba.”

—

They discover throughout the day that the soldier’s name is James— _ Giacomo, _ he had said quickly to Remus once his shock of relieved grief had subsided, stumbling over a surname before turning to Sirius and saying  _ James, I am James, _ with excitable clarity past his thick accent.

After his battalion had begun pulling out of the Alps, the need to escape the horrors of the trenches had become too much for James to ignore. He left under cover of night several days ago, using the tactics he had been taught from his training days to learn which berries or plants could keep him alive as he put as much distance between him and the alpine front as possible. He hadn’t expected, he explained over the third serving of soup Sirius had conjured up for him surreptitiously, to find a house here, but God must have been listening as he noticed it through the trees just as he began thinking of home.

Remus had shared a quick little flicker of a look with Sirius at that—God or no God, Sirius’ safety wards seem to have his own dosage of sympathy to them.

The three of them communicate in a strange little trade of languages; Remus and James speak quick and excited Italian at one another—bright vowels, sharp consonants, a cantering cadence to Sirius’ ear that sounds more like music than speech—and Remus feeds the gist of it to Sirius in French, to which Sirius then asks his own questions or replies in French again to have Remus twist it all back into Italian. It’s stumbling at first but becomes more efficient, and throughout the afternoon Sirius feels his core smoldering hot and radiant for Remus’ brilliance.

They learn small pieces of James’ life as they go. He was drafted, previously a banker, and served for the last six months before fleeing. He likes wine. He misses good bread. Their conversation hangs up after a while on James’ question to Remus of  _ To where in Turin are you returning? _ After translating the question Remus fusses with his teacup, filled with Sirius’ perfected recipe for bicerin, and replies with a shrug; “Sto bene qui.”

“Non le manca la patria?” James screws up his brows at Remus, his uniform shed and perhaps thrown into the mulch pit in the back garden to be replaced by a clean shirt and trousers from the endless supply of comfortable clothes Sirius has spelled into the bureaus here. Remus shakes his head, and James seems to relent as he fights what looks like a small smile while glancing shortly between Remus and Sirius. 

“Qu'est-ce qu'il vous a demandé?” Sirius asks Remus,  _ What did he ask you? _

“Si je veux ou non retourner à Turin.”  _ Whether or not I want to go back home, to Turin. _

Sirius’ stomach twists, unbidden, and he trains his face into calm. “Et vous avez dit...?”  _ And you told him…? _

Remus polishes off his bicerin and sets it on the table with a brisk little clearing of his throat. “Voici ma patrie maintenant.”  _ Here is my home now. _

If the sense of comfort and safety throughout the cottage swells in that moment, the magic compounding itself just a bit, neither Sirius nor Remus comment on it. James continues sinking into his new and fragile freedom, telling tales of his childhood and his early life as Remus is happy to listen, and Sirius vows to all the deepest parts of himself that he will live and die for Remus as long as he draws breath.

Later, in the quiet press of nighttime and a low fire burning to keep the sitting room warm, James tells them both about his wife.

Her name, Remus explains through the solemn and wondrous exchange of their chatter that has James starry-eyed and misty-eyed by equal turns, is Lily. They’ve been married for three years. She is the most beautiful woman in all of Europe.

“Ci siamo incontrati all'opera,” James murmurs, his feet stretched out under a blanket and his stare fixed softly in the middle-distance of the sitting room.

“Nous nous sommes rencontrés à l'opéra,” Remus translates gently.  _ We met at the opera. _

“Laquelle?” Sirius asks, and James grins as he catches the meaning without Remus’ help.

“La _ Manon Lescaut  _ di Puccini.”

Sirius smiles to himself. Puccini is himself a wizard, but quite obnoxiously obvious about it with the way he weaves his melodies.

“Si è avvicinata a me all'intervallo e mi ha chiesto: avrebbe una sigaretta? E le ho detto che poteva avere il mio cuore, se voleva,” James says, his voice becoming distant with the press of memory, and Sirius can tell immediately it’s a memory that has sustained him through the long months of hell in the trenches.

“Elle lui a demandé une cigarette et il lui a donné son cœur à la place,” Remus says with a soft smile.  _ She asked him for a cigarette, and he gave her his heart instead. _

Sirius raises his own glass, wine for both himself and James of Merlin knows which vintage from deep in the cottage cellar, delicious and dry and perfect for chasing memories. “Elle a l'air incroyable.”  _ She sounds incredible. _

Remus translates for him, and James looks at Sirius with conviction and pride burning fiercely behind his eyes. He nods. “Oui.”

Later, after sleep has taken James like a thief and Sirius and Remus decided to let him be on the comfortable chair in which he nodded off, Sirius cards a hand through Remus’ hair as Remus traces gentle little patterns along Sirius’ chest in the pale cast of moonlight plucking herself in through the bedroom curtains. “Il l'aime tellement qu'il pourrait éclater. J'espère qu'elle est toujours en vie,” Remus murmurs of James,  _ He loves her so much he might burst. I hope she’s still alive. _

Sirius thinks for a moment before he nods. “Je connais un moyen de la joindre,”  _ I have a way he can reach her. _

“Mon cher sorcier,” Remus says through a yawn, torpid with sleep as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to the side of Sirius’ neck. “Tu devrais lui montrer demain matin.”  _ My dear wizard. You should show him in the morning. _

Sirius’ heart soars, and he holds Remus nearer as Remus settles against him and drifts deeply into sleep. “Mon cher ange,” murmured to the dark on silent wings;  _ My dear angel. _

—

“Quindi riceverà la lettera oggi? Oggi stesso?” James gestures with his sealed scroll of parchment, his brows furrowed as though he still thinks Sirius is playing a trick on him after spending an entire morning drafting a minor novel to his wife.

“Elle recevra la lettre le jour même de son envoi?” Remus relays to Sirius with an amused smile on his face.  _ She will receive the letter the same day we send it? _

Sirius nods at James. “Sì.”

The owl on the open kitchen windowsill makes an impatient sound, as though hustling James along, and ruffles her feathers. Sirius chuckles and scratches her tenderly under her vee-shaped little beak, her heart-shaped face fluffing when she tilts her head eagerly into Sirius’ fingertips. “Patience, Beatrice,” he coos at her. James squints at the exchange. Remus fails to hold in a laugh.

“Penso che siate due pazzi, ma ci provo lo stesso,” James mutters as he lets Sirius take his letter and fasten it to the owl’s leg.

“Il pense que nous sommes fous,” Remus says with such easy flippance, such comfort in the two of them being seen as one, that Sirius feels his heart swell between his ribs,  _ He thinks we’re crazy.  _ Switching back to Italian, Remus leans on the counter and gestures casually at Sirius. “È un mago, lo sa.”

James tosses his head back and laughs. “È un pagliaccio, ma se riesco a sentire mia moglie, lo faccio eleggere Papa.”

Beatrice leaves the windowsill in a graceful and silent unfurling of wings, up into the sky with James’ hopes secured fast to her leg. Sirius looks expectantly at Remus for a translation, and Remus looks back with barely-reigned glee. Sirius is so madly in love it hurts, just for a moment. “Préparez-vous pour un voyage à Rome si nous obtenons une réponse de Lily, vous aurez peut-être une nouvelle maison au Vatican.”  _ Prepare for a trip to Rome if we get a reply from Lily, you might have a new home in the Vatican. _

James makes an exaggerated crossing motion over the front of his face and chest and Remus laughs, which makes Sirius laugh, which makes James roll his eyes and join them, briefly, and for a moment everything feels sharp with potential and the echoes of the future.

It takes nearly two days for Beatrice to return, and as James tries his best to quit glancing out the window for a flash of the barn owl’s wings Sirius feels acutely filled with sympathy for him. Remus does his best to distract James with stories or things to do around the cottage or the fields sprawling around outside them—gardening, walking, dredging up the threads of Remus’ life before the war and painting landscapes on canvases Sirius has gotten quite good at summoning up from old fabric in the secrecy of the bedroom every now and then—but it seems even he can sense the weighty preoccupation that sits in James’ heart. James begins making plans to start the long journey back to Alba, a walk that very well might kill him for exhaustion alone not to mention the risk of being found out as a deserter, and despite the spells Sirius could cast for him or the charms he can weave for bundles of endless food, it remains worrying to think of somebody making that journey despite the inherent and romantic heroics of it.

Luckily, Beatrice returns before supper on the second evening.

It seems as though James will vibrate right out of his skin as Sirius carefully unties a fresh sheet of rough paper folded tightly against Beatrice’s leg, distracting her with a small bit of venison that she nibbles right down before preening at her chest feathers. Sirius passes the letter to James and he unfolds it with shaking fingers, his eyes already welling up but spilling over with an unfettered sob of relief when he sees the handwriting folded neatly within. He clutches the sheets of paper with both hands as he sits heavily in one of the kitchen chairs to read, and Sirius jumps slightly when he feels a soft touch press into his palm by his side. He looks over to see Remus sliding their hands together, a quiet bid of thanks and hope all in one. Sirius sweeps his thumb over the back of Remus’ hand and hopes it communicates as much as a kiss might.

James is quiet in his voracity to hear from his wife, his eyes flying across the letter line by line by line, until he cries out with ecstatic disbelief on the second page and tangles one hand in his hair to look up with a dawn-bright smile at both Sirius and Remus. “È incinta.”

Remus raises his eyebrows. “È suo?”

Laughing, slightly manic, James nods. “Sì, è mio, dice di essere al settimo mese.”

“Elle est enceinte de sept mois,” Remus translates with a grin, James’ excitement infectious,  _ She’s seven months pregnant. _

“Félicitations! Un fils?” Sirius sits down across from James, peeking over at the letter as though he could understand the words on the page.

“Un maschio?” Remus asks.

James’ mood sobers for a moment, his jaw working around emotion as he blinks quickly through the ecstatic tears still tracing their way down his face. “Se il mondo è ancora in fiamme, si spera che sia una  _ femmina.” _

Looking staggered, Remus nods to himself while Sirius looks up at him for the incoming translation. “Il espère avoir une fille si la guerre continue,” he says gently,  _ He hopes for a daughter if the war is still on. _

There is a short and powerful pause between the three of them as James’ words sink in. Sirius grips James warmly around the back of his wrist, conviction suddenly lighting hot in his guts. “Je peux vous amener votre femme ici,” he says intently,  _ I can bring your wife here to you, _ glancing quickly up to Remus and nodding with encouragement for a quick translation. Remus’ eyes widen, his reasoning catching up quickly with Sirius’ intent as he seems to remember the way Sirius had magicked them to the cottage from across the mountain range, a journey that should have taken days. James closes his eyes briefly and leans back in his chair when Remus tells him in Italian. When he opens them again, he looks at Sirius as though accepting the reality of things like owls who can bring the mail across hundreds of thousands of acres of land and the idea of safety in the maw of war.

“Se riesce a portarla qui,” James murmurs, his voice direct and smoldering with emotion, “si dimentichi il Papato. La farò incoronare re, cazzo.”

“Faites-le, il pourrait vous en faire un trône,” Remus says, nodding once, his eyes bright with appreciative challenge as he looks at Sirius;  _ Do it, you might get a throne out of this one. _

—

“Ne te perds pas, ou j'aurai à faire un long périple pour te retrouver.”  _ Don’t get lost, or else I have a very long journey ahead of me to find you. _

Remus chews softly on his bottom lip across from Sirius, James several paces away from them, all three of them in the back garden to see Sirius off to find Lily in Alba. Sirius has a scrap of paper with James’ old address on it tucked safely into the inner pocket of his robes, the plainest set he has for easier passage outside of the wizarding world despite the cover-up charms he has ready, and his wand is primed at his side. Sirius lifts one hand up to stroke Remus’ cheek with his thumb, willing away the apprehension fighting its way to the top of Remus’ stare, and gives him a small smile. “Vous avez une façon très amusante de dire que je vais vous manquer,” he says softly,  _ You have a very strange way of telling me you’ll miss me. _

Covering Sirius’ hand with his own, his palm so much warmer now than it was all those weeks ago when Sirius first coaxed him back from the edge of the afterlife, Remus licks his lips nervously. “Tu me manquerais si nous étions séparés même un instant,” he whispers,  _ I would miss you if we were apart for even a single moment. _

“Es-tu sûr d'avoir été peintre et non poète?”  _ Are you sure you were a painter and not a poet? _ Sirius jokes gently, pulling a little snort of laughter from Remus before surprising him to stillness with a brief, slow, indolent kiss. Remus chases his lips with a little twitch when Sirius pulls back, and Sirius grants him an adoring look as Remus flushes slightly with embarrassment. “Ne t'inquiète pas.”  _ Don’t worry. _

Sirius steps back and gestures at James to get his attention, seeing that he had turned away with obvious propriety to let Remus and Sirius have some semblance of privacy. “Je serai de retour avant le coucher du soleil.”  _ I’ll be back before sundown. _

“E se lei non venisse?” James blurts, as though the thought has been sitting heavily on him for a long time. Remus sighs lightly himself.

“Et si elle ne veut pas venir avec toi?”  _ What if she doesn’t come with you? _

“Je lui dis qu'elle est née le 30 janvier et que votre mère s'appelle Euphemia, n'est-ce pas?” Sirius repeats James’ instructions back to him;  _ I tell her she was born on the thirtieth of January and your mother’s name is Euphemia, correct? _

James nods at Sirius once Remus translates for him, but he still seems preoccupied. “E poi lei parla inglese molto meglio di me.” He holds up a hand when Remus starts in on the French, and his gaze hardens in a way that makes Sirius see the militant fervor in his stare that has occasionally come up in Remus late at night as Sirius lets Remus unload his thoughts and memories of the war. “Per favore,” James says fervently, “Faccia tutto il possibile per portarla qui.”

Remus swallows, equally cowed by James’ intensity. “Elle parle beaucoup mieux l'anglais que lui. S'il-te-plaît, fais tout ce que tu peux pour la ramener.”  _ She speaks much better English than he does. Please do anything you can to bring her back. _

Sirius nods, and he strides over to James to pull him tightly into an assuring embrace. “Lo prometto,” he whispers,  _ I promise;  _ the prayer Remus has taught him late at night when caught between the trappings of sleep and waking, weaving oaths across the spaces between their hearts scrawled in flesh and blood and spoor, spoken here for James as a simple contract from one heart that constantly aches for its twin to another.

James claps his back in agreement, releasing Sirius to kiss Remus in another languid farewell, and with a sharp crack of magic cleaving the seams of reality Sirius rockets away to Alba.

—

The walkup Sirius finds is tucked away in an old tan-brick stretch of apartments, corners patched and pocked with age as though time eats away at Italy differently than it does its more northern siblings. Summer here is twice as virulent as the Swiss sort, and Sirius tugs at his collar and pushes the whole long bundle of his hair over one shoulder for a bit of air before knocking twice on the earthy red-brown that states  _ Nº 9. _

A beautiful woman with copper hair twisted up into a knot and a spray of freckles across her nose beneath wide, impossible-green eyes opens the door, peering around its edge. Sirius is almost surprised to find James’ description of her entirely accurate.

“Buongiorno,” Sirius says, sketching a shallow little bow.

“Buongiorno, la posso aiutare, signore?” Lily doesn’t move from behind the door and even glances around a bit over Sirius’ shoulder into the quiet town streets. It seems she’s also just as whip-smart as James had described her as well.

“Do you speak English?” Hazarding a small smile, Sirius slips his wand into his palm to ready a calming spell if Lily doesn’t lend an ear to his reasoning. Lily furrows her brow.

“Yes. Can I help you?” Her accent is light as down, and she opens the door just a bit wider.

“I am a friend of your husband.”

Lily’s eyes flicker and begin to redden, glassing with tears, but to her credit she simply clenches her jaw and grips the doorframe more tightly. “From the front?”

Scrambling slightly, Sirius shakes his hand and raises the palm not holding his wand. “No, I —no, in the letter?”

Lily pauses for a moment, her eyes narrowing. “Il mago?” she whispers. Relief sparks through Sirius and he nods, first eager and then more than slightly fumbling as Lily’s chin begins to wobble and a couple tears skitter down her cheeks. “He’s alive?”

“Yes, very alive,” Sirius says quickly, “I left him safe with m—my companion, in Switzerland, far away from any front,” stumbling slightly over the word, strange to call Remus anything beyond simply  _ his, _ but stranger still since Remus doesn’t belong to him insomuch as it seems they belong to one another now. There isn’t any way Lily could parse all of that through his meager attempt at bridging a language gap, but she sniffles deeply and nods, pressing a hand over her mouth and leaning heavily on the door as she tries to regain her composure.

“Won’t you please come in, signore,” she manages to say, waving Sirius in and opening the door for him to enter.

Sirius steps over the threshold in the cool dimness of an interior shaded against the high-noon heat, and when Lily shuts the door behind her Sirius sees that she had been hiding the healthy swell of her belly. She leans back against the flat of the door, a low slice of daylight coming in from the kitchen window down a narrow little hallway to illuminate her from the nose down, and Sirius watches quietly as she calms her with several slow, low breaths and a hand over her heart. 

“I did not dream to think he was alive, not truly, until I could know for sure, y—how did you come here from across the north?” She finally asks in a very soft voice. “I received that letter the night before last. There isn’t any way you took a train.”

Sirius gives her a purposeful look and a small smile. “Sono un mago,” he repeats just as gently,  _ I am a wizard _ . Lily rests her head back against the door and breathes a hapless little laugh to herself.

“My aunt used to say she could cast spells.” She wipes tidily at her eyes and sniffles again before absently resting a hand on her rounded belly. “I never thought it real until she taught me how to do a love charm the day before I met Giacomo.”

Sirius smiles a bit wider to himself. “Those are very good at attracting the right people.”

“And now you are here in my home, telling me there is more than just love spells and potions for birthing calves.” Lily smooths a hand absently over her hair and stands up from her lean against the door, gesturing for Sirius to follow her into the kitchen. “Come, signore. Tell me more about how in God’s name my husband found a wizard.”

Lily brews a stout little carafe of coffee on the stove range as Sirius starts at the beginning, telling her of patrolling the mountains and discovering Remus before the trek back to the cottage and James’ discovery of the place. She’s in tidy tears again as the coffee finishes steeping and she pours, shaking her head self-consciously while she passes Sirius his cup across the table.

“My apologies, signore. I can never quit these tears these days, it’s all this one’s fault.” She puts a hand to her belly and swipes at her eyes, sighing. “My little devil boy.”

Sirius’ eyebrows go up. “You know it’s a boy?”

For the first time since his arrival, Lily smiles. Sirius understands immediately the unique and fresh hell James must have experienced in the trenches to think on the reality of never seeing that smile again. “You have your magic, I have mine. Yes, I know it’s a boy.”

They sip their coffee steadily and Lily asks after Sirius’ own life, to which he weaves his answers as truthfully as he can without breaking secrecy any more than he already has—which is to say quite a lot, but it hasn’t truly felt like any sort of rupture to him and he hasn’t received any strongly-worded warning letters on his windowsill, so he’ll carry on and leave behind the vestiges of politicking and sticking his nose in all the nastier edges of field work. It’s a very sudden decision that he finds himself making with his fingers pinched white around the small handle of his coffee cup; leave it all behind, grow old and slow and ash-white in that cottage alongside Remus, where only he knows the real truth of anything. Sirius calms himself with one last sip of coffee after telling Lily about the magnificent way the light hits the western half of the cottage in the evenings.

“And Giacomo, he is okay?” Lily asks for the third time as she worries her thumb along the lip of her cup. Sirius nods.

“All in all, he’s just fine.”

Lily gives him a funny little smile. “What is that phrase, ‘all in all’?”

“I—well, I think it’s…like saying ‘here’s everything for you,’” Sirius stammers, doubting himself very sharply. He has a feeling Lily’s overarching tendency is to make one feel as though she’s running circles around you. She sets down her cup and stands up. 

“So it’s like we say ‘tutto sommato,’ ‘there it is.’”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Well, all in all, I think I am ready to see my husband now.” Lily holds out her arm to Sirius as though requesting him as an escort on an afternoon walk, and he stands as well with a chuckle while he draws his wand.

“Then away we go.”

The snap of their departure echoes briefly along the surfaces of the kitchen and rattles both empty coffee cups in their saucers, and while one of them seems as though it might tip over and crash to the floor, it catches the lip of the plate just so at the last moment to snap itself upright, wobbling slightly but safe on the flat of Lily’s best porcelain.

—

They alight in the sitting room, and the hem of Lily’s dress is still settling when Remus dashes in from the kitchen.

“Ciao,” he blurts, dinner plate eyes wide at Lily, dumbfounded for a moment that makes Sirius balk with the sudden need to hold in a laugh for  _ Of course, _ Remus hasn’t seen a young woman in what might be years at this point.

“Remus,” Lily says, beaming, not a question, knowing him from Sirius’ heart-addled description as she steps over to him and pulls him into an embrace. She squeezes him as she might a brother long returned from his service, and as Remus returns the second surprising hold he’s had in less than a week he gives Sirius a disbelieving little look over her shoulder—it might be relief, it might be surprise, it might be amazement that Sirius was able to find her and bring her here, burgeoning belly and all.

Sirius feels the burn of it to his core like a match to a wick, his body pure tallow to fuel that catching flare in an encompassing burst. He is undeniably in love.

“Vado a chiamarlo,” Remus says when Lily releases him, nodding, turning toward the hall out to the back garden with Lily on his heels and refusing to simply stand by. Remus lets her follow and Sirius follows Lily, his pulse quick to see what good he’s sewn now as if this one reunion can erase the years of questionable things he’s done in the name of his homeland, his country, what Remus and James have called  _ Patria _ —if he never returns there, can he truly be free of those trappings?

The door opens to James sitting restless at the foot of a small tree several paces away, frowning into a book he probably hasn’t absorbed a single word of since Sirius left. He looks up immediately before his expression crumbles immediately with emotion, dropping the book like a hot coal and he bursts into tears and races to where Lily is coming down the tiny set of stairs and onto the grass—he throws his arms around Lily as though making sure she’s solid, real,  _ here, _ and clutches her to him for a moment before leaning back and kissing her with the fervor of one who thought the luxury lost forever.

“Nous devrions les laisser,” Remus murmurs over his shoulder as he eases the door shut;  _ We should let them be. _

“Oui.” Sirius watches Remus take one last glance at the reunion through the doorjamb, a quiet smile on his face, and thinks not for the first time on the shocking strength of life in Remus now that stands in such contrast to the mountainside discovery of what Sirius had believed was just a tragically beautiful corpse. He catches Remus’ wrist as he passes on his way back into the kitchen, and Remus pauses very close to him with a smile in his eyes.

“As-tu apprécié Alba?” Remus asks him softly,  _ Did you enjoy Alba? _

“J'aime beaucoup plus être ici,” Sirius murmurs, “auprès de toi.”  _ I being here with you much more. _

Remus is silent but seems to search Sirius’ gaze in the low light of afternoon just barely touching this hallway. He reaches up with the hand whose wrist Sirius is till holding gently and sets his fingertips to Sirius’ bottom lip. “Même quand ils repartiront pour leur patrie, je ne veux jamais te quitter.” Remus swallows, his eyes fathoms deep and filled with surety. “Je veux rester avec toi, pour toujours.”  _ Even when those two go back home, I never want to leave. I want to stay with you. _

Sirius is prepared to weave his own long explanation of why he wants Remus close—why he  _ needs _ Remus close, why he wants to dissolve into this countryside and never exist beyond it, happy to spend the rest of his life in the anonymity of quiet bliss with nothing but his magic and Remus’ blessed virility alongside him—but his heart leaps onto his tongue and shortens his words for him; “Je t'aime,” he whispers.  _ I love you. _

A wobbly smile skips onto Remus’ mouth for the moment of perception Sirius has of it before he leans up, pulling Sirius down into a deep kiss that thrums through Sirius’ body and wraps its threads around his soul, pulling and pulling and pulling until Sirius is sure they’ve been compressed into one body.

“Moi aussi,” Remus breathes into the gaps of scraping for breath, nodding against Sirius’ forehead, “Je t'aime aussi, après la mort et au-delà.”  _ I love you as well, even after death and the beyond. _

And there the future lies,  _ tutto sommato _ ; Sirius can make their life here far sweeter than the beyond, and everything thereafter then as chocolate and milk to a cup of simple coffee.

Beholden to no other place but their own, they are free to fade away from everything but their own togetherness.


End file.
